I recently rented Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for the Wii from Gamefly. I've never been a fan of the series, as I've never played a single entry in the franchise. But my fiance was a big fan of the original and she was really interested in this re-imagining of the first. So I added it to my que, as I enjoy it when she watches me play games. She gets really excited, and scared, if they are horror games.
Silent Hill did indeed start out pretty scary. Even though I've never played a single game of Silent Hill before, just knowing about the franchise was enough to get me anxious in the opening moments of the game. It was dark, eerily quiet, and all I had was a flashlight. Then the first chase sequence came, and we were both a little on the edge of our seats. As the game went on, there weren't any monsters chasing us beyond those sequences, but that was ok because what was more disturbing was the phone messages and the stories we were uncovering. All this was very different from what we expected, and we were definitely along for the ride... until about the third chase.
Then it started to get frustrating. Suddenly, the chase wasn't as straight forward as the first two, and I had to rely on the map. Unfortunately, the map is completely useless in this game. I barely knew where I was, or how to get to where I was going. Also, I needed to be isolated from those creatures chasing me because I had to stop running to take out my map. And if I wanted to use my map as I went forward, I could only walk and not run. This made things very difficult and annoying.
As the chase sequences became more and more frustrating and less fun, so too did everything that happened in between. Sure there were a few neat puzzle moments, like in the art room, but a lot of what happened in between wasn't very rewarding. It became quite clear that the formula was: walk around, possibly encounter an NPC, look for stuff, then get chased. We were not looking forward to the getting chased part therefore we were losing interest in wanting to complete the puzzles that progressed the plot.
As for the plot, it started off ok like the rest of the game, but it too became confusing, dull, and frustrating. More questions than answers were piling up, and the lack of believable responses form the protagonist was unnerving, and we didn't know if he was seeing what we were seeing. We were completely lost, and as I went on, we both felt no desire to continue.
Yet when it seemed like things couldn't get any worse, the game ended with it's "twist". I won't spoil it, but it made the both of us very upset. Again it left us with more questions about the events of the game than answers. The most important one being, "What was the point of playing this story?"
It was the first rental from Gamelfy I felt disappointed in getting. What felt like an eternity of suffering through pointless plot, bad dialogue, annoying chase sequences, and an overall disappointing gaming experience, ended up being only 7 hours and 3 disc starts (as my Wii says). This was another disappointing feature; being so short a game. On the bright side if it was any longer, I'd probably go insane too.
At least I didn't pay for it. And even if you are a fan of the seres, I recommended you don't either.
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